Franklin Evans: houstontohouston

New York-based Franklin Evans’ work takes advantage of the indexical nature of materials and utilizes various systems, stages of cataloguing, archival processes, and collage as a way to re-think identity, history, narrative, and genealogy. Featuring a selection of works from past exhibitions that were rethought and reworked within the context of this new site-specific project, houstontohouston marked Evans’ solo debut in Houston and his first major solo institutional project in the United States.

Exploring forms and ideas that consider the near infinite cycle of recombination, Evans uses painting, text, performance, and collaboration to present open system environments that are both symbiotic and cannibalistic. The title of the exhibition is a humorous play on words, as the artist loosely recreated his New York studio, located on Houston Street, within the gallery walls of DiverseWorks in Houston, TX, bridging these two disparate locations through art. Imagining the two spaces, houstontohouston includes multiple un-stretched canvas works, architectural structures, false walls, reprinted paper press releases, artist-tape screens, sculptural floor pieces, wall paintings, photographs, sound works, and other pieces produced over the past few years, in addition to new works created on site.

about the artist

Franklin Evans was born in Reno Nevada in 1967. He received a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from University of Iowa. Evans’ work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Greater New York 2010, MoMA PS1, NY; eyesontheedge, Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY; timeoutin, PM Foundation, Dorado, Puerto Rico; flatbedfactum02, Federico Luger, Milan, Italy; Inquiring Eyes: Greensboro Collects Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; The Last Book, Zentral Bibliothek of Zurich, Switzerland; and 5th Bienal: The (S) Files 007, El Museo del Barrio, NY. His work is in numerous collections and has been written about by various art journals and major publications.

Evans has received numerous grants and residencies including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2010), Trebesice Artists in Residence, Czech Republic (2010), Yaddo Residency, Sartoga Springs, NY (2009), and The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, NY (2008). Additionally Evans’ work will be featured in his first solo museum exhibition, timepaths, at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno in 2013.

In addition to creating large-scale immersive environments, Evans has collaborated with artist Trajal Harrell in his traveling work, Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (s), as well as curated the exhibition Perverted by Theater with Paul David Young at Apexart, NY in 2008.